Teaching is the best way to learn. Why? Because what we call teaching is usually a combination of actions, attitudes, and responsibilities that make for good learning. The teacher is fully engaged and active, often acting with strong motivation, clear goals, and a sense of responsibility not just for the material and her/his own action, but also for others and for the group as a whole. "Student," on the other hand, often describes a very limited range of activity.
In this activity participants design and teach a lesson using any available object. It is a "quick and dirty" activity -- only ten minutes to prepare the lesson -- so it is best to treat it as a game or an experiment.
The Flow:
Form small groups (pairs or trios)
Joker places a chair in the center of the room and explains that the groups have ten minutes to come up with a learning activity using the chair. The purpose is to help people learn the subject that you are learning (e.g., English). Each group will then teach its lesson, so they should think about how they will do it. Who will do what? How?
When ten minutes are up, joker asks one group to begin. When their lesson is done, do a quick assessment: what did you see? Who did what? (Joker should feel free to share her observations here, verifying her understanding each time.)
The team that went first chooses the next team.
De-brief: When all are finished, you can discuss what people learned about teaching or ask people to write about what they saw and what they think about it.
NOTE: This activity can follow the Learning Interview, drawing on the insights gained in that activity concerning effective learning and teaching. Review the results of that activity and encourage people to plan lessons that use what we know about our own successful learning.
You can also relate this to the John Cage's Ten Rules.
What is our relationship to...? is a great example of using chairs to teach something.